AC/DC – Black Ice

Nobody creates better hard rock riffs than AC/DC. Nobody. Who hasn’t pounded the car dashboard to “Highway to Hell” or “Back in Black” with reckless abandon? Guitarist Angus Young is a little like the Pete Townshend of hard rock; Townshend has never been known for his speedy lead solos, nor has Young, but both men know how to put power chords together in the most delightful way. Of course, with the exception of “Squeeze Box”, and perhaps a few others, Townshend has never been overly obsessed with sex. But AC/DC hits, like “Big Balls” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” sung oh so sleazily by Brian Johnson, reveal a quintet of musical minds, which have willingly leaped headfirst into the gutter. AC/DC lyrics are consistently filled with obvious double entendres; the sort that it wouldn’t take a college degree to pick up on. AC/DC may never create an ambitious rock opera, like The Who’s Tommy, but I wouldn’t put it past them to come out with a rock and roll tribute to, say, Deep Throat.

Without a doubt, Black Ice sounds like a great new AC/DC album. In fact, many of these songs start off like dead ringers for about a million different AC/DC hits. But sounding like a classic, and being a classic, are two entirely different propositions. Because when you dig deeper, there’s little substance beneath the surface of Black Ice. The best AC/DC songs ought to make you cringe and laugh at the same time. Yet that doesn’t ever happen nearly enough with this effort. Instead, too often these songs come off as pedestrian and obvious. For instance, one track is titled “War Machine”. Can you guess what this one’s about? Yep, it’s about today’s governmental war machines – perhaps more specifically the U.S. and its foreign policy. When political commentary is required, let’s leave it to Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne; two men with a reputation for keen global insight. Heck even Pete Townshend bragged, “We won’t get fooled again,” and one can be relatively certain Pete won’t get duped by “W” either. When we want AC/DC’s political opinions, we’ll ask for them. (Don’t hold your breath, boys)

Black Ice opens with a generic choo-choo called “Rock N Roll Train”. (The disc’s track listing overflows with variations on the word “rock”, by the way. These title siblings include “She Likes Rock ‘N’ Roll,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Dream,” “Rocking All The Way”… see a pattern?). But there are no clever train analogies contained within this misdirected locomotive. I mean, the picture of a long train shooting though a dark tunnel is an obvious potential direction, isn’t it? “Runaway train/ Train right off the tracks,” goes the song’s chorus without a whiff of smokestack lightning.

What’s left on the rest of the CD is something that sounds like a great AC/DC tribute band. If you put Black Ice on in the background, not listening too carefully, you may even fool yourself into thinking it’s a ‘best of’ collection of some sort. And while it has all the aural elements of a vintage AC/DC work, it simply doesn’t read or sing like one. In my mind, AC/DC is supposed to be the real life Spinal Tap – only their jokes are intentional. Without the jokes, Spinal Tap was just a poor man’s hard rock band, and without humor, AC/DC is a pitifully powerless ghost of its former self.

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